Examination of Witnesses (Question Numbers
20-39)
DEPARTMENT OF
TRANSPORT, NETWORK
RAIL, OFFICE
OF RAIL
REGULATION AND
ASSOCIATION OF
TRAIN OPERATING
COMPANIES
4 JUNE 2008
Q20 Chairman: Is that still the main
cause of delays?
Dr Mitchell: That is correct,
it is still the main cause of delays.
Q21 Chairman: Something for which
they are entirely responsible.
Dr Mitchell: They are, yes.
Q22 Chairman: Other colleagues can
come back on rail delays but I will just leave that for a moment.
Can I just ask a couple of questions about incident management
and lesson learning? Mr Coucher, would you like to look at paragraph
2.9 which you can find on page 16? If we look at paragraph 2.9
we see that 20% of incident reports noted that communications
were poor within Network Rail. Should you not do more to improve
them?
Mr Coucher: Yes. We always try
to improve and improve and improve. There is obviously scope for
improvement and we will continue to do so.
Q23 Chairman: Some of these reasons
were very basic, for instance mobile phones were not available.
It does not sound like rocket science to me.
Mr Coucher: Not all of the network
has network coverage with mobile communications. There are pockets
around the country, particular in remote parts of Scotland, where
there is no signal at all so that does cause us difficulties.
Q24 Chairman: You believe you could
do more to improve communications.
Mr Coucher: Yes, and we are currently
rolling out a complete mobile communication system which will
enable everybody—signallers, drivers and line side people—to
be able to talk. That is a big win for the rail industry.
Q25 Chairman: If we look at the incident
review process—this is dealt with in paragraph 2.26—we
can see that incident reports are often very carefully compiled.
Perhaps they could be used to spread best practice more. Is that
right, do you think?
Mr Coucher: I do agree and that
is an area where the NAO rightly pointed out areas where we can
improve and since we have done that we now routinely look at the
incident reports and we promulgate best practice across the country.
Q26 Chairman: Can I just ask you
a question about how you work with the emergency services, Mr
Coucher? If you look at paragraph 2.22 which you can find on page
20 you will see there that you stopped funding British Transport
Police to train other emergency services. Why did you do this?
Mr Coucher: I think that is perhaps
a misrepresentation there. We have doubled the amount we give
the British Transport Police in the last five years from £33
million a year to £66 million a year and we have changed
the arrangements, so we have an all inclusive sum and we had expected
that to be included.
Q27 Chairman: They say that eight
police forces commented that more training would be beneficial:
"Three forces noted that they had experienced difficulties
in organising exercises with Network Rail in recent years. The
British Transport Police commented that until the late 1990s it
had received funding from Railtrack (Network Rail's predecessor)
to provide multi-agency training for all rail incidents and confirmed
that it would be happy to reinstate such a training programme
again". So all this is wrong, is it?
Mr Coucher: No. What I said was
that the funding for the British Transport Police we have increased
from £33 million in 2002 to £66 million, which includes
the provision of training and we are prepared to work with any
outside agencies in any kind of training. We are happy to do that
at any time.
Q28 Chairman: So the British Transport
Police can have as much money as they want to help train the other
emergency services, can they? This paragraph is giving a wrong
impression, is it?
Mr Coucher: There has been a change
in the funding arrangements by which we fund British Transport
Police and we are more than happy to work with any outside agency
in training their people if they are prepared to do so, but we
do have 43 police forces out there, the primary interface of course
is with the British Transport Police.
Q29 Chairman: Mr Franks, looking
at paragraph 3.5 on page 24, why is it so difficult to provide
the public with reliable and decent information about delays?
Mr Franks: The most difficult
thing is finding out precisely what has happened at any particular
time and getting the message across to a large number of customers,
a large number of trains and a large number of staff. This whole
point is a subject of real review within the industry. ATOC has
established a working group to try to improve things; we have
issued a code of practice for the whole industry and we are trying
to ensure that that code of practice is rolled out across all
of the train operating companies. It is an area of real focus.
Q30 Chairman: I am sure you recognise
it is a real priority with the public.
Mr Franks: Absolutely.
Chairman: It drives them crazy to be
sitting in a train and not know what is going on. John Pugh?
Q31 Dr Pugh: One of the great opportunities
you have here, if you have been delayed by trains and trains going
off the rails, is to get your own back in part. I use the West
Coast Main Line quite a lot. I looked through the stats and I
find they have the greatest number of significant incidents—I
think that is correct from the stats we have in front of us—and
most of those are down to Network Rail in origin and most of those
appear to fall into various categories: cable faults, overhead
lines and signal faults. I have sat here in the past and I have
heard quite glowing reports of West Coast Main Line progress and
all that sort of thing. Is that not something of a paradox? If
I had thought that a lot of money had been spent to little effect
given the actual reliability record of that particular line, would
I have any sort of case?
Mr Coucher: We have to be slightly
careful about the comparison for the West Coast Main Line because
it is our geographical area. Our London Northwest area goes from
Euston right the way to Holyhead, into the northern parts of Wales,
into Manchester and into the Pennines; it is a very, very large
geographical area, it does not relate just to the West Coast Main
Line. I think your comments about West Coast reliability just
go to underline precisely why we need to complete the investment
programme. It is very old infrastructure; it is very unreliable.
That is why we are trying to replace it. Recent incidents that
we have experienced on the West Coast go to underline that. The
cable problems we had just a few weeks ago were because cables
that were 60 years old were starting to fail and they are due
to be replaced, but we know that this causes very significant
impact on the travelling public and we are determined to finish
this project so that we can give a much better service to the
passengers very quickly.
Q32 Dr Pugh: I travel across lines
which obviously have been invested in because they are disrupted
on a Sunday and lots of other times for good purposes and have
been for quite some time. I am assured that the sections I travel
on have received very, very significant investment. You are saying
that even with this you are still looking at very old equipment
on certain on stretches of line.
Mr Coucher: We are gradually replacing
it. Not all of it is being replaced of course; there is a rolling
programme that will go on for many years. The West Coast is the
most intensely used piece of railway that we have out there; some
of the track that we put down today will have to be replaced in
five years because it is wearing out. It is a constant challenge
to keep that railway operating at very, very high levels of performance.
Q33 Dr Pugh: Going back to the point
the Chairman made about communication, the point made in the Report
is that there are not enough rail staff often available at the
time when things go wrong. That is quite understandable because
you do need extra staff. If you see people mobbing round Euston
when the trains are called off you fear for them to some extent
because they are in a very pressured situation and they do not
actually know themselves what is going to happen. In terms of
good practice guidance that is disseminated, what does that have
in it that is not done at the moment? What is that suggesting
that people do more of?
Mr Franks: There are a number
of things. I have a copy here, if you would like to see it. It
is quite a comprehensive document but it actually covers information
off station, so that is including things like websites and e-services,
external media, contact centres and giving information to those
places. It includes information at stations and, picking up your
point about additional resources, when we take this and develop
it into contingency plans or review our contingency plans it is
looking at things like whether we can bring people out of headquarters
organisations, can we train them to actually assist on stations
and give support? It is looking at information on train, providing
guidance on precisely when and what type of information we should
give on train and it has also got a section on information for
planned engineering works and how we should get that information
out to customers. It is a very comprehensive document.
Q34 Dr Pugh: One of the points picked
out on page 24 at 3.5 is a point made by the train operating companies:
"too many rail staff trying to contact the control centre
at the same time".
Mr Franks: That is a real issue
because obviously everyone is seeking information.
Q35 Dr Pugh: Does that document say
something about that?
Mr Franks: Yes, it does, and there
is some real innovation in this using the web where we are now
able to provide information on what we call a flip chart—an
automated flip chart—so that as much information as we can
get out to our people is actually available and can be accessed
electronically.
Q36 Dr Pugh: Does it say something
about a point also made here: "a perceived reluctance among
drivers to speak to passengers"? I think all of us round
here are very glad to have the drivers or the guards or whoever
speak to us; the more chatty they are, the more we, as passengers,
actually like it.
Mr Franks: Exactly. There is a
cultural issue in the industry with drivers and getting drivers
to actually communicate with customers where there are driver-only
operated services. Where we have guards and on-board personnel
then that is not so much of an issue.
Q37 Dr Pugh: Rather than protocol
it would be quite a good idea to ask everybody to be more forthcoming.
I travel on a train to Liverpool very, very frequently and there
is a chap on there who not only tells me where I am going and
what is happening, but what football he supports and how they
have done in the European Championship. That kind of communication
actually gives you the impression that you are dealing with a
human being who understands the transport experience.
Mr Franks: I support the point
totally.
Q38 Dr Pugh: On the question of being
able to respond positively to the situation when it occurs, clearly
there is a difficulty mentioned in the Report that sometimes the
people at the stations have no idea what is going on out there
because the information is possessed by Network Rail or whoever
is looking at the bit of mangled signalling or cabling that confronts
them out in the sticks. How is that being improved?
Mr Franks: One of the big innovations
in recent times is integrated control centres where our own train
operating personnel are sitting right next door to Network Rail
personnel and making the decisions on how to deal with disruptions.
That is almost widespread across the country now, that the train
operating companies are sitting with Network Rail. So that is
one way. The second way is through technology. I would be the
first to admit that there is a lot we can still do in terms of
technological advance here but, as I said, the guidance that we
have issued actually does tackle all of these points. I would
be happy to leave a copy behind.
Q39 Dr Pugh: Targets have been mentioned
already and clearly you are very sensitive to that because they
affect how you are remunerated and so on, but that may be not
necessarily always to the advantage of the passenger. Is there
any evidence within the industry that actually the targets to
some extent do not always help when there is an incident? In other
words, it may be sometimes more expedient to the company not to
let the train run late but actually to cancel it altogether. It
is not useful to the passenger to have that happen but it may
actually help you meet targets.
Mr Franks: If a train is cancelled
it features in our passenger performance measure as a failure,
so it is effectively late; it counts in our statistics. There
is no reason for taking that sort of decision other than to try
to recover the railway in an effective way.
Mr Coucher: If I could just draw
the Committee's attention to paragraph 3.9 which did question
whether there was a perception of whether it was in the best interests
of the passengers and the Report did not find evidence that we
were not doing the right thing. Indeed, on the contrary there
are instances where we have made the right decision for passengers
even though it will affect the incentivisation regimes of Network
Rail.
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